Tuesday, February 26, 2008

Brain Surgery would be easier

I consider myself somewhat "technical." I can rip a computer apart (and put it back together), install just about any program, and I'm on more people's speed dial for computer assistance than I care to imagine, but for the life of me whoever came up with iTunes must be a far, far, faaaaaar more advanced human than anyone on this earth! For over a year I was a DJ, tech support, and Treasurer for our local radio station. I dealt with mixers, several computers, created station ID ads and songs, Winamp was what everyone wanted to use, I preferred MusicMatch, and both were very easy to learn, but this iTunes makes me cringe every time it automatically opens.

If you all remember I bought Sydney an iPod for her birthday coming up in June (no I haven't given it to her yet) but I want to know the thing a bit before I give it to her so I've been "playing" with it. I thought I would throw some upbeat tunes on and run on my treadmill. I downloaded iTunes, plugged in the iPod and everything was okay.... then about a week ago I formatted my computer and reinstalled iTunes. Today I plugged in the iPod and promptly deleted everything on it! I think it's time I started looking for a few tutorials online because I'm scared I'm going to wipe out my whole music collection. I have over 5000 songs! Can anyone tell me if I delete a song in iTunes will it really, for sure, honestly, stay in my computer, and just leave iTunes? iTunes is really just the "link" to my song files, right? I keep bouncing back and forth between iTunes and my music folder just to make sure the songs are still there but I just want confirmation from someone who really knows the program.

And while I'm asking experts, how do I just pick and choose a few songs to go in the iPod and not my whole collection? Do you know how long it took to "sync" over 5000 songs?! The whole time I'm looking at the big red X telling me "DO NOT DISCONNECT" wishing I could stop the thing with cold hard stares because I don't dare touch it! And not only the songs it synced but all my long forgotten radio station ads, station id songs, Sydney's kid songs (like I really want to hear "Little Bunny Foo Foo" while I'm running on my treadmill) and my complete Christmas collection! I'm throwing my hands in the hair (most likely they will land on my head and pull my hair out!). Whatever happened to the good old drag & drop songs on the little mp3 icon in windows explorer? Now we have a "library" with playlists, party shuffle, podcasts, etc.

Does anyone have a link to some great site for (oh Lord I never thought I would say this about myself) a newbie with an iPod?

6 comments:

Sorry, no help from this techno weenie. But I will commiserate because my son was given my B-in-L's old i-pod with about 2 dozen songs on it and after almost two months of asking his dad to put new songs on it and getting the standard "Later" response, he came to me. With my standard "Don't expect miracles with me and computers, but I'll try" answer, I managed to clear all the songs off it, even the ones that he wanted to keep (oops), and got him to go through the song library and pick out some new ones. So far so good. The most predictable part comes when his father comes home and Liam says "Mom erased all of the songs -even the ones I wanted to keep!" And his father says "I would have helped if you had asked me" To which I could only look at the man and say "Don't start! Two months!"

I'm assuming that because you talk of WinAmp, that you are usually dealing with a Windows-based machine.

So far, your ipod doing exactly what it is meant to do in those situations :) The best way to get to know it is to plug it in and then go into iTunes and check out all of the settings related to the ipod in the preferences. I don't have windows so I don't know how much it differs from the Mac version but it is fairly straightforward if you just read all of the options.

As to whether you can delete things out of iTunes but not off your drive, it should ask you if you want to delete the file or just remove the song when you hit delete. I am sure the terminology will be different there (on a Mac is asks if you want to move the file to the trash). If it doesn't ask at all it's just removing it from the playlist or from iTunes (you can only remove from iTunes altogether in a main window (Music/Podcasts, etc NOT a playlist or by some fancy deleting keystrokes that will probably be different on a windows machine).

Itunes may or may not be the "keeper" of all of your music collection, depend on whether you tell it to keep your music organized or not.

Finally, to just put a few songs on the ipod you make a playlist and then in the ipod settings tell it to sync only that playlist (by unchecking anything else).

But really, I think if you just go digging around in the preferences (options, whatever you call it on a windows machine these days, dunno) you should be able to work things out. But the ipod has to be plugged in to the computer else you won't get the ipod settings. (Each ipod has different available options so it won't know what to offer you unless it can see the device.)

My Zachary prefers musicmatch to itunes, as well. itunes is the only thing I've ever used.

I think you can copy and paste your music files into itunes. Mine does not pull songs from my computer's music files. I wonder if it is something in the preferences in itunes that you can tell it not to do that?

I'm not technical at all (I'm sure the above paragraph did not give that away at all...). I hope you find someone who can help you!! =)

I am glad sickchick is on the ball. I could have had sirdar help you, but he is busy with his online poker tournament. We have a mac we use to download stuff on his shuffle and my MP3 player, but I am not sure how any of it works. You have quite an extensive tech background in this stuff.

Links

Yarngear
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The Loom Knitter's Pattern Central (Excellent videos!)Fraggle Loom Love
One of the best sites for info and tons of links.Aunty Bonnie's Page
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